After decades of fighting for civil rights and the voting rights, former state Rep. Tyrone Brooks has, himself, lost his right to vote. Now a convicted felon, Brooks will learn this week if he will also lose his freedom.
On Monday, a federal judge will begin a sentencing hearing for Brooks, a decades-long fixture in the Legislature and a voice for the disadvantaged and African Americans since he first worked with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s.
According to court filings, the sentencing process could take a week.
Seven months ago, the Atlanta Democrat resigned his seat in Legislature and the next day pleaded guilty to tax fraud on his 2011 return and no contest to five counts of mail or wire fraud. He solicited large corporations and a labor union for contributions to either the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials, or his sham charity, Universal Humanities, and then transferred those monies to his personal account.
Prosecutors say he used the contributions — about $1 million over 15 years — to pay credit card, power, cable, and insurance premium bills for himself, his wife and his ex-wife. The contributions were from the likes of the Coca-Cola Co., Georgia Power, Georgia Pacific and Northside Hospital. None of it went to literacy programs, voter education and registration efforts or initiatives addressing violence in the black community as was promised when he asked for donations.
“In the end, it is a sad and disappointing conclusion of a career that was intended to be a model of public service,” prosecutors wrote in a memorandum in advance of his sentencing hearing.
Prosecutors are asking U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg to sentence Brooks, 70, to two years in prison. The sentencing guidelines recommend a sentence of 46 months to 57 months in prison.
Brooks’ lawyers, including former Gov. Roy Barnes, are pleading for probation, claiming he was a sloppy, inexperienced bookkeeper and over-zealous advocate for his programs and never motivated by greed.
"It's unfortunate that the very rights he fought for now are being taken away from him," said Bernard Lafayette, another key member in the Civil Rights Movement who worked with Brooks from the beginning.
Brooks was a fixture in the General Assembly for almost 3½ decades and his profession was always listed in Legislative documents as “civil rights worker,” leaving him for the most part to survive on his legislative salary of just over $17,000 a year and his $4,800 annual stipend as GABEO’s president.
Brooks was the voice for African-American office holders for decades as president of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials. The Atlanta Democrat was a key player in the move to remove the controversial stars and bars from the state flag, in fashioning congressional and legislative districts that would give black voters more say in elections. Building on his years working with Martin Luther King Jr., starting when he was a teenager, Brooks has filed lawsuits and led protests, most recently in his attempt to find those responsible for the 1946 lynching of two black couples in Walton County.
“His legacy is secure,” said Joe Beasley, another veteran of the civil rights movement. “I think very few people have done as much positive for the state of Georgia, really the nation, like Tyrone. He was not just representing his (legislative) district, he was representing marginalize people all over the state of Georgia.”
Brooks was indicted May 16, 2013, on 30 federal charges of mail, wire and tax fraud. Prosecutors said over at least 15 years Brooks pocketed almost $1 million in contributions to GABEO and Universal Humanities. They say he created a second bank account for GABEO, unknown to the other elected officials who were members, and put donations directly in there. He claimed a board of directors for Universal Humanities yet, according to court documents, none of the people listed as board members even knew the charity existed.
Prosecutors acknowledged Brooks’ work with King and his efforts “promoting diversity within Georgia’s judicial branch, to helping change the Georgia state flag, to ably representing his district in the Georgia General Assembly for over 30 years.”
But in contrast to those decades of good deeds, his “crimes ultimately were selfish,” prosecutors wrote.
Coca-Cola, Northside Hospital, Georgia Pacific and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters wrote lengthy letters to the judge telling of how Brooks had duped them, using his reputation as a civil rights leader and impressing on them a desperate need for money. The hundreds of thousands of dollars the businesses gave Brooks meant other charities did not get funds they also were requesting, they wrote.
Coke wrote in its letter to Totenberg it had given Universal Humanities $400,000 in grants for literacy programs for disadvantaged communities and another $96,000 to sponsor GABEO conferences. “The good-will associated with Representative Brooks was an important part of (Coke’s) decision to provide funding to both Universal Humanities and GABEO,” Allen Yee, Coke’s senior counsel, wrote
He said the company’s “trust was violated and confidence was abused.”
Northside’s president and chief executive officer, Robert Quattrocchi, wrote the hospital had given $225,000 for literacy, health care, food and clothing programs. The first $15,000 was donated in October 2005 after Quattrocchi toured a building in downtown Atlanta that Brooks said was Universal Humanities’ headquarters.
Georgia Pacific wrote it gave Brooks a total of $170,000 from 1996 through 2012 to buy books, train teachers and fund other needs of the literacy programs that he said Universal Humanities backed.
The Teamsters gave Brooks $36,000 over nine years for GABEO literacy, voter education and end violence programs.
Despite pleading guilty, Brooks insisted he was targeted for "being a civil rights worker." He also said the charges were an attempt to stop his decades-long push to solve the 1946 lynchings on the Moore's Ford Bridge in Walton County. No one has been charged with the hangings of two black couples soon after one of them was released from jail having been charged with stabbing and wounding a white man. Brooks has said the charges were brought to draw attention away from the FBI's failure to close the case.
He later said in a news interview the charges against him were “a continuation of destroying Martin Luther King’s movement.”
His lawyers wrote in a court filing detailing Brooks’ history that his only motivation was his work and he will continue regardless of his circumstances. “Tyrone Brooks has no intention of slowing down in his pursuit of justice and equality on behalf of all citizens, not now, not ever.”
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